Life, in Monochromia
by Alice Starling
Summary: Her world is shaded black and white. "They are the kind of people who love so passionately, so desperately, so painfully, that maybe they shouldn't be allowed to love at all; it would be less dangerous that way." Fauxlivia/Red!Lincoln


Children see the world in definites; there is good and evil, a hero and a villain. There is right and wrong—and sometimes maybe you can be a little bit wrong, but at the end of the day you are one or the other. You save or you destroy. Each side is as ruthless; and ruthlessness is a trait romanticized in the hero and abhorrent in the villain.

Olivia Dunham had previously been sure that her ruthlessness—her cutthroat convictions—had made her a hero. Now she is not so sure. It occurs to her as of late that she is little more than an idealistic child, fighting tooth and nail for the designated good guy and doing all she can to destroy the ones she is supposed to hate.

She is a child.

And she is convicted when it comes to everything: who she loves and who she hates. Because she loves and hates with an equal amount of passion, the kind of passion that almost hurts, almost rips her apart; it bubbles along underneath her skin and threatens to explode.

She's not the only one, either; she sees more of herself in Lincoln Lee than she would care to admit, for his sake. They have the same kind of convictions. They are the kind of people who love so passionately, so desperately, so painfully, that maybe they shouldn't be allowed to love at all; it would be less dangerous that way. The difference between the two of them is that he hasn't yet been forced headlong into a situation that forces him—_violently_ forces him—to reconsider all of his previous notions of good and evil, right and wrong.

For that, for those shreds of innocence and idealism that he still has and that were stolen from her, she loves him all the more. Because she does love him, of course, in a kind of way that hurts so much it feels like she's about to tear apart at the seams.

Not like she loves Frank; and she does, in fact, love Frank. This must mean that maybe she's always—subconsciously, at least—been aware of the destructive power of her own convictions, because loving Frank was always a safe, easy thing. There is nothing brutal, nothing too raw or gritty or desperate or violent, about the way that she loves Frank; she imagines that maybe she loves Frank in the way that regular people love each other. It's pleasant and beautiful, and nothing that hurts so bad it feels like she could die.

This, then, would be why she could never give up Frank for Lincoln; because loving Lincoln would be too dangerous. Is too dangerous. More so because both of them love that way. So she smothers those feelings, the way that she should probably smother those other convictions; because somewhere inside her, underneath where she has smothered it with sand, she tries not to allow herself to love Lincoln the same way she allows herself to believe in good and evil, wrong and right.

The problem of all of this is her fatal mistake; the one that has damaged her idealism, the one that Lincoln hasn't quite made and means his is still somewhat intact. She suppressed her convictions when it came to how she felt about other people, but let them rise when it came to the sort of causes that had her shooting quasi-innocent deaf men in the back of the head. Lincoln embraces his convictions, because his are about the way he feels about other people; it's him holding a gun to a psychopath's head to find a cure for parasitic bugs in her belly, and his willingness to pull the trigger. He would throw away everything he has and worked for, in an effort to save her.

It goes like this:

Olivia wakes up in a tangle of black sheets in an unfamiliar bed with a familiar arm hooked around her waist. There is brilliant golden sunlight streaming in through the window, illuminating the flattened tips of his rockstar-spiked hair and each of his eyelashes; he looks golden and whole and young in the morning light, although Olivia can almost imagine she sees a fine latticework of scars from where he is not yet completely healed from being burned to a crisp. She tries not to move too much; she's lying flat on her back, with his arm beneath her, elbow bent so that he is loosely hugging her other side; his fingertips just barely brush the skin of her starting-to-swell abdomen. His face is pressed up against the side of her arm, his breath tickling her own skin.

They are children, playing at real life; and no matter how she tries, Olivia cannot force herself to grow up. She can't even fathom asking Lincoln too. So she has come up with a solution: she will let herself have her black and white convictions when it comes to Lincoln. She will believe, feel, love so hard that it hurts; and it does, this morning and all the others. This way she does not have to believe so hard in things that might only hurt her in the end, because she knows that however painful, aching, dangerous it feels to love Lincoln, he will never hurt her.

"Good morning," he mumbles against her arm, lips brushing and tickling her; she gives him a little smile, twists and rolls over so that they're facing each other. "How's the baby?"

"Mm. Hungry," she says, brushing her lips against his.

One of his eyes opens slowly, then the other; he sighs mock-dramatically and pulls his arm out from underneath her. "This is one of those you-wanting-breakfast things, isn't it?"

His only response is another little smile, and another—longer, deeper—kiss.

Children believe in definites; in right and wrong, love and hate.

So does Olivia Dunham.

* * *

**A/N: So I guess technically, after the promo for 3x18, this is AU. But yeah. Lincoln Lee; endless awesomeness in both universes.**

**Anyway, I kind of noticed-looking back at the episodes from where Fauxlivia shows up to where she goes up-she has this hardcore black and white mentality when it comes to her causes. But I think-looking at what happened with Frank after Peter-she's not as sure of her convictions when it comes to her personal connections with other people, which could mean that there are feelings for Lincoln beneath her badass surface. (Yes, Fauxlivia/Red!Lincoln is almost as much my favorite Fringe ship as Liv/Peter. Sue me. Actually, no, don't, please.) Thus, this fic was born.**


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